Three girls did not survive the attack and died on the railway tracks in Basai village where they were dumped. Meena and Alka, who received six and three stab wounds, respectively, survived.

Dharmendra, who worked as a daily wager in a factory, is absconding and the police have launched a search to nab him.

Recuperating in the state-run Civil Hospital, Meena said her husband suspected her character and it was because of this that the family was attacked. Her 5-year-old daughter Alka was stabbed on her neck, stomach and thigh.

The family lives in a rented house in Bhavani Enclave near the railway tracks and Meena works in a garments export factory in Sector 37, Gurgaon.

“On Sunday afternoon my husband took us to the market. After a bit of shopping, he offered to take us to temple in Basai village. We first took a train to Gari Harsaru and then to Basai. By that time it had already got late, so we started walking back home from the Basai railway station,” Meena told Hindustan Times.

She said around 10.15 p.m. when the family reached a solitary spot along the tracks, her husband entered into an altercation over a trivial matter.

“All of a sudden he took out a knife and started stabbing me indiscriminately. As the eldest daughter Sujata and others tried to save me, he attacked them too. I fell on the ground in semiconscious state. He took me as dead and then stabbed all the four girls one by one and fled,” she added.

A long, cold night

Drenched in blood stained clothes, five-year-old Alka and her mother Meena spent the entire night under the open sky. The spot where the attack took place is one kilometre from Basai Railway station.

Meena said two youths saw them but got scared and, instead of helping them, they ran away.

It was only around 8 o’clock the next morning that some passerby informed the railway police and the mother-daughter duo were rescued.

He killed another child four years ago

In a startling disclosure, Meena told the police that her husband had killed another daughter four years ago. She said her husband threw their 5-year-old daughter in the river in Patna.

“The family decided to suppress the matter and not report to the police,” she said.